I listen to Boris Giltburg’s recording of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata as highres download (Naxos) and experience a moment of glory. Of course, this is first of all due to the congenial interpretation where the young Israeli accomplishes a coherent dramaturgy that’s rarely found with this unwieldy musical work. The extended slow movement is sailing on a breathe, and the final fugue doesn’t confront us with the tensions of less successful interpretations. But this may also be attributed to the homogeneously playing loudspeakers. Basically neglectable details like e.g. muffled pedal sounds are depicted, but don’t stand out unbecomingly. They convey the atmosphere of the recording venue and add to the liveliness of the reproduction. The highs are shining, but not glistening; they put naturally decaying highlights on the ore colours of Giltburg’s Fazioli grand piano, but also on its wooden warmth. Every tone has timbre and volume. Although by tendency more on the soft than on the sharply focused side, contour and shape still never get blurry. Attack and decay processes, reverberation and room ambience, all this can be distinguished in a realistic manner. The sound image does not even become tight when Giltburg is stacking layers of voluminous chord blocks with a physically perceivable momentum.

A magical performance

In general, I’m always amazed what a strong, powerful grip these delicate structures can exert. When I hear Jack de Johnette play the drums, it gives me a physical experience: despite all the tonal roundness the attack always comes to the point as dry as a bone; also in terms of rhythm and timing the Scansonic doesn’t give in anywhere. Double bass pizzicati are plucked with punch and decay with natural resonance. Wonderful how big orchestras are also effortlessly reproduced by the slim columns in my listening room with an area of a good forty square metres (430 sq. ft.), how they develop a proper punch in the tutti and how groups and single instruments fan out showing coherent proportions. It’s as if I were live on scene at the legendary Gothenburg Concert Hall when I hear the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra perform the Second by Sibelius under the baton of Santtu-Matias Rouvali. How forceful the low brass sounds, and how three-dimensionally tubas and trombones stand out! Deep drone notes from double basses and bassoons are literally mesmerising.

So the MB2.5 B knows how to stage a great game. But it’s also an aesthere. Its talent to depict all relevant nuances and shades benefits the string sextets by Johannes Brahms in the – and this refers to both interpretation and audio engineering – sublime new production with the Belcea Quartett (Alpha). Two violins, violas and celli want to be distinguished from and among each other. At the same time I follow with rapt attention what’s happening on every music stand with regard to phrasing, articulation and fine-dynamical finesse.

Repeatedly, there were moments during the extended listening sessions with the Scansonic where I was wondering if we need any more loudspeaker at all. Do larger and more expensive speakers really bring more pleasure than those involving Danes? Yes, in case of doubt they do. When mustering pertinent legends of the upper price ranges from Raidho, from Dynaudio, from Magico and other matadors against them, one would hardly not hear that they can still do a little more. For considerably more money, that’s understood. Even more important: as long as the Scansonics are playing, envy is rather not gnawing in me. I am in the music, absorbed by it – the question of whether things could still get better does not even arise.